495 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



teration 



stead of Planets. It was objected by Pro- 

 fessor Kirk wood in 1869 that there could 

 be no sufficient cohesion in such an enor- 

 mously diffused mass as the planets are sup- 

 posed to have sprung from, to account for 

 the wide intervals between them. The mat- 

 ter separated through the growing excess 

 of centrifugal speed would have been cast 

 off, not by rarely recurring efforts, but con- 

 tinually, fragmentarily, pari passu with 

 condensation and acceleration. Each wisp 

 of nebula, as it found itself unduly hurried, 

 would have declared its independence, and 

 set about revolving and condensing on its 

 own account. The result would have been 

 a meteoric, not a planetary system. CLERKE 

 History of Astronomy, pt. ii, ch. 9, p. 382. 

 (Bl., 1893.) 



2434. Involves Retrograde 



Motion of All Planets. M. Faye's leading 

 contention is that, under the circumstances 

 assumed by Laplace, not the two outer 

 planets alone, but the whole company must 

 have been possessed of retrograde rotation. 

 For they were formed ex hypothesi after 

 the sun; central condensation had reached 

 an advanced stage when the rings they were 

 derived from separated; the principle of in- 

 verse squares consequently held good, and 

 Kepler's laws were in full operation. Now 

 particles circulating in obedience to these 

 laws can only since their velocity decreases 

 outward from the center of attraction co- 

 alesce into a globe with a backward axial 

 movement. Nor was Laplace blind to this 

 flaw in his theory; but his effort to remove 

 it, tho it passed muster for the best part 

 of a century, was scarcely successful. His 

 planet-forming rings were made to rotate 

 all in one piece, 'their outer parts thus neces- 

 sarily traveling at a swifter linear rate than 

 their inner parts, and eventually uniting, 

 equally of necessity, into a forward-spinning 

 body. The strength of cohesion involved 

 may, however, safely be called impossible, 

 especially when it is considered that nebu- 

 lous materials were in question. CLERKE 

 History of Astronomy, pt. ii, ch. 9, p. 383. 

 (Bl., 1893.) 



2435. OBJECTS HELP REALIZA- 

 TION Portraits and Toys Explanation of 

 Tendency to Idol-worship. Who does not 

 " realize " more the fact of a dead or dis- 

 tant friend's existence at the moment when 

 a portrait, letter, garment, or other material 

 reminder of him is found? The whole no- 

 tion of him then grows pungent and speaks 

 to us and shakes us in a manner unknown 

 at other times. In children's minds, fancies 

 and realities live side by side. But how- 

 ever lively their fancies may be, they still 

 gain help from association with reality. 

 The imaginative child identifies its dramatis 

 persona? with some doll or other material 

 object, and this evidently solidifies belief, 

 little as it may resemble what it is held to 

 stand for. A thing not too interesting by 

 its own real qualities generally does the 



best service here. The most useful doll I 

 ever saw was a large cucumber in the 

 hands of a little Amazonian-Indian girl; 

 she nursed it and washed it and rocked it 

 to sleep in a hammock, and talked to it all 

 day long there was no part in life which 

 the cucumber did not play. JAMES Psy- 

 chology, vol. ii, ch. 21, p. 303. (H. H. & 

 Co., 1899.) 



2436. OBLIGATION TO MORALITY 

 A PRIMAL CONVICTION All Attempts at 

 Explanation Vain. Just as in the physical 

 world there are bodies or substances which 

 are (to us) elementary, so in the spiritual 

 world there are perceptions, feelings, or 

 emotions which are equally elementary 

 that is to say, which resist all attempts to 

 resolve them into a combination of other and 

 simpler affections of the mind. And of 

 this kind is the idea, or the conception, or 

 the sentiment of obligation. That which 

 we mean when we say, " I ought," is a 

 meaning which is incapable of reduction. 

 It is a meaning which enters as an element 

 into many other conceptions, and into the 

 import of many other forms of expression, but 

 it is itself uncompounded. All attempts to ex- 

 plain it do one or other of these two things 

 either they assume and include the idea 

 of obligation in the very circumlocutions by 

 which they profess to explain its origin, 

 or else they build up a structure which, 

 when completed, remains as destitute of the 

 idea of obligation as the separate materials 

 of which it is composed. In the one case, 

 they first put in the gold, and then they 

 think that by some alchemy they have made 

 it; in the other case, they do not indeed 

 first put in the gold, but neither in the end 

 do they ever get it. No combination of other 

 things will give the idea of obligation, un- 

 less with and among these things there is 

 some concealed or unconscious admission of 

 itself. ARGYLL Unity of Nature, ch. 9, p. 

 191. (Burt.) 



2437. OBLITERATION OF INSTINCT 

 IN HEMISPHERELESS PIGEONS- Schra- 

 der gives a striking account of the instinct- 

 less condition of his brainless pigeons, active 

 as they were in the way of locomotion and 

 voice. " The hemisphereless animal moves 

 in a world of bodies which . . . are all 

 of equal value for him. . . . He is, to 

 use Goltz's apt expression, impersonal. . . . 

 Every object is for him only a space-occupy- 

 ing mass ; he turns out of his path for an or- 

 dinary pigeon no otherwise than for a stone. 

 He may try to climb over both. All authors 

 agree that they never found any difference, 

 whether it was an inanimate body, a cat, a 

 dog, or a bird of prey which came in their 

 pigeon's way. The creature knows neither 

 friends nor enemies ; in the thickest com- 

 pany it lives like a hermit. ... As the 

 male pays no attention to the female, so she 

 pays none to her young. The brood may 

 follow he mother, ceaselessly calling for 

 food, but they might as well ask it from a 



